@ Ken - Nah. I have shot RAW, but it's too darn much trouble! I use a Nikon D300 of a D70, and do the usual stuff in Photoshop that I used to do in the darkroom - some cropping, bumping contrast, a bit of sharpening...dodging and burning (that's the Shadow/Light thingy)...

But, the photos are usually pretty much the way they come out of the camera.

Well, Ken, I think most photos need some fixing. Almost always need a crop. Some need color adjustments (not so much the D300, though). And it would be hard to find a photo that didn't need a bit of sharpening.

Now, I did all that stuff for years in the darkroom. And much more. The machines to which you took your film to be processed did it automatically. So, I don't understand when people say they think digital photos have to be just as they come out of the camera. They seldom if ever thought that about film photos.

Furthermore, none of what we do captures "reality." It captures what our eye sees of a particular moment in time which may or may not be a valid representation and changes the second we snap the shutter.

I consider photography an art, and thus want my photos to not only express what I think I've seen, but to be as technically perfect as they can be.